


Under Negotiation

by Nabielka



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Discussion of Veretian pet contracts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 21:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11586105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: The stable boy and the tavern prostitute are saving up money for a shared future. But is a potentially lucrative proposition worth the price?





	Under Negotiation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MildredMost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildredMost/gifts).



The innkeeper had not been pleased to see him. 

The sun had come down some hours ago, those staying overnight gone up to their rooms and the locals gone home, and only hopes of much deeper pockets than Henri’s would have made him hospitable now.

But it could not phase Henri, who had encountered the grumbling of those much higher in the instep and much more inclined to make their displeasure felt deeply, and in whose pocket burned Jehan’s letter, folded several times over, the script even more scrawled than usual, imploring him to come. 

He took the stairs two at a time, and was already pounding on Jehan’s door when it occurred to him that he might be occupied with a client, and displeased to be disturbed. 

And perhaps a little poorer for it too, if the client had not yet finished. Even so little would set them back in their plans, and already the prospect of a life together seemed so many years off as to be only reachable once Jehan’s looks had faded with age, and Henri’s agility with them. But then the same was true of every time Henri bought a loaf of bread or paid to have the soles of his shoes fixed, and he could no more have waited patiently on the other side of the door while listening to another man fuck his lover than he could have sustained himself on air. 

The door opened; Henri found himself in Jehan’s arms. 

He had missed this. If he could have him for an hour, not even as his clients did, but just by his side, the memory would sustain him for days. The greatest delight was to fall asleep knowing he was there to be touched if Henri only stretched out his hand, to wake and see him smiling in his sleep, half his hair standing up wildly and the other half plastered against his head. 

Still embracing, they moved inside the room. Jehan pulled him to the bed, linking their mouths together. 

He dreamed of waking up beside him always, to be able to bestow light kisses upon him at all times of day, on his cheek, on his collarbone, on his lips. But such luxury of time was for now only a dream. When they met the kissing was rough, and Jehan had a tendency to try to both speak and kiss at once, which did not necessarily work well. 

He tried it now. “You came.” It came out on a sigh. He had one arm still looped around Henri’s neck, holding him close. “Hmm, your shoulders are wider now.” 

“Of course I came,” said Henri between kisses. “You wrote and asked for me.”

There was no reason why this should have made Jehan pull back to stare at him. It was perfectly true. What could he have done but do so, though it cost him two days’ wages just to make the journey? If Jehan was in need, if Jehan even just missed him enough to not resist the impulse for the benefit of future gain, how could Henri have refused him?

“Yes,” said Jehan finally, blinking hard. “Listen, I’ve –” He broke off on a laugh that lacked mirth, and turned his face away. He pulled further away, until they were no longer touching at all, and sat back, cross-legged. 

Henri mirrored him. He felt the loss of contact, so soon after their reunion, as though something cold had run over his skin. But it was little, compared to the chill that came over him as Jehan continued. 

A lord had come, one of those whom the innkeeper would have been delighted to greet at any time of night, and had so enjoyed their three coppers’ worth of bedsport that he had offered Jehan a permanent contract. 

“But you can’t!” said Henri unthinkingly. 

It was the wrong thing to say. Jehan hated being ordered around, and yet he was forced to take it multiple times a day and night from his clients; any hint of it from a friend made him as receptive to suggestion as a blow to the face. His chin came up.

“And why not? You say you want to be with me, and yet when an opportunity to achieve it comes up, you’re against it? I’d earn more that way in a year than I would in five of this – more! You must have seen their pets travelling. They get showered in gifts.” He stopped, and considered. “Well, most of them at least. There was one here who only had an earring, but even that might have fetched a decent sum. Besides, he wasn’t very attractive; maybe that was why.”

If that was why, Jehan ought to have no such problems. 

Still, Henri had seen them, all right, standing aside while their masters commandeered horses from the stables, ‘on the King’s business’, as they said. They wore rubies around their necks and diamonds around their wrists. 

He said, “Yes, they can’t walk a step without jingling. But that’s just to show off the lords’ wealth. You think they all got so rich by passing off their wealth to the nearest boy willing to bend over for them? He’ll drape you in jewels and take them back at the end of it.”

“Even if,” said Jehan. “Even if so, there’s still the contractual payment. A few years and if you’re wise, you’ll be set up for life. And we don’t need that much. A year ought to do.” He reached out to take Henri’s hand. It was warm, and rather soft: the tavern employed another to do its cooking and cleaning, and kept him for keeping the guests happy. 

But the demands of one night or a few, of clients who could be refused, was far from giving oneself up entirely to one for a long period, to be taken whenever and however one’s lord wished. 

Henri had seen the bruises revealed as the jewels moved. He had learned, over time, to drop his gaze. 

“A year,” he echoed. 

“It’s not so long,” said Jehan, pressing his hand. “We might see each other once, twice during that time. It’s not so great a sacrifice. Think! After that year we’ll see each other most days.” He leaned forward, adjusting his legs, to press his lips to Henri’s jaw. “You wake up so early – you can wake up beside me every morning and take me to bed each night. No one else, ever.” His eyelids fluttered shut. “And in that one year, what difference to you if it’s one man or a thousand?”

It _was_ worse somehow, even just on those merits. He had no fear of all those men, of whom Jehan spoke without exemption with contempt. But a lover, though a paying one – and he too was paying now for Jehan’s time, though all they lost by the transaction was the innkeeper’s cut – who would talk with Jehan, might make him laugh, might take him about the country like Henri would never be able to… Even had it been just that, he would have feared it. 

Still, he was reluctant to voice his concerns. Jehan would scoff. There was violence and cruelty in those of all ranks; it was only that the victims of the less affluent dressed simply and went about unnoticed. What were the chances that this man, who had managed, it seemed, to be unobjectionable enough for the night to make Jehan not reject the proposition outright, just had to be one of them? 

“If he pays,” he said, instead. “Which you cannot rely on.”

He remembered well standing in the stables, bent over and bare from the waist. The Captain had not been gentle; it had hurt. But worse than the pain had been to have the Prince’s slave, a man who by all rights was to be pitied as one who had suffered deeply since the Akielons had taken Delfeur, come and look at him so, as though he were some lord looking down at the scum of the streets; worse than the pain had been to have the Captain continue to fuck him with the slave looking on. 

After all that, they had still refused to pay: the Captain, the Prince’s men. 

“I remember,” Jehan said. His face had grown grave, his tone careful. One hand reached out to play with Henri’s hair, hanging low. “I remember,” he said gently, “they did you wrong.”

“You cannot trust,” Henri said, catching at his hand, his thumb against the wrist, slipping beneath the cuff, “in their promises and their terms. If you have a serious enough dispute with the innkeeper below, at least it can be brought to the Provost here, who’ll be inclined towards him, no doubt, but at least there’ll be a chance. If your high and mighty refused to pay as he ought, who is to make him do so? He’ll sit in judgement over his own domains, with only the King above him, and that one wouldn’t even be troubled to make his own man pay.” 

He pushed the cuff back, tracing his thumb over the little veins made visible. He kept his gaze down it, on Jehan’s hand rather than his face, and said, a little weakly, “So I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

He waited, not looking up, in the silence. Beneath his thumb, Jehan’s pulse was not quite steady. 

The hand twitched. Henri could not see his face, but when Jehan spoke again, his tone was lighter. “A pity you do not say my fortune is not to be found down that route. Only, it’s my palm you should be looking at. You know, a travelling fair has been to Nesson in your absence.”

There was still much to be said on the subject. He could not think of the words, and let himself be diverted. “What did they foretell for you, then?” He bent his head down, as though trying to read some message in the lines. “Here, I can see a long and happy future ahead for you with your lover,” he said, as though he could speak it into being. He pressed a kiss to that fine wrist, the ruffs tickling his lips, and heard Jehan’s breathing change.

“Yes,” said he, drawing it out, “they do say that soothsayers tell you only what you want to hear.” 

Henri felt his cheeks flame. “Is it?” he asked, despite himself. “What you want to hear?” 

He looked up. Jehan’s eyes shone. 

“Don’t you know?” he said. “That’s why I’m proposing this. A year and it’s over, not like this.” His hand was still held in Henri’s grasp; he pulled it away. “And I can’t see the end of it like this. So many nights and so many men.”

There was something caught in Henri’s throat. He tried to swallow it down, and found he could not. He saw only that pale face, that mess of sandy hair, those dark and lovely eyes. 

He reached out, and traced the line of Jehan’s jaw with his fingers. He shaved, as Henri knew, late in the day; there was not much stubble to feel yet. 

“And can you see it by putting yourself under the power of one man?” he said, keeping his tone gentle. “I cannot stop you if so, I know. But it’s a terrible thing, and you would bear it badly.” His thumb swept over the curve of Jehan’s cheek, which was a little reddened. He said, into the silence that followed, “I do know you.”

He did. The chin came up, dislodging his hand. “And you think I don’t know myself better? I could live with it, if I needed to. Is this what you consider love? Telling me what to do?”

Henri was a little stung despite himself. “That’s what they consider – probably not love exactly, but their right, whatever else the contract might say. I couldn’t bear – I can’t think of you enduring it. Not for my sake, and not for the sake of the money, or the promise of it.”

He reached out to pull Jehan’s hands towards him, to clasp them in his own. He came willingly enough, keeping his eyes on Henri’s face, and, after a long moment, leaned in to kiss him again. 

It was not quite comfortable. Their hands remained joined between them. Henri’s back hurt. He was conscious that he should move, draw his hand back and put it to better use, but he had the absurd feeling that to let go of Jehan would be to lose him, lose him to this man who would contract for him, lose him to an uncertain future, marred with what had been sacrificed on its behalf. 

But Jehan’s mouth was insistent on his, and oh, how Henri had missed this. It did not seem imperative to argue the matter, only to kiss Jehan again and again as he had longed to do for all those long nights they had been apart. Each gasp from Jehan’s lips was an unlooked-for wonder, every brush of Jehan’s skin against his felt like a burning brand. 

“Please,” he gasped out, and knew not whether he asked for Jehan’s assurance that he would not agree to it, or simply for Jehan not to stop touching him, not let him think of the many lonely nights ahead of them until they could finally forge a life together and did not have to sustain themselves on these short nights snatched away from the rest of the world.


End file.
